Gary Ballard's Blog: The Bridge Chronicles by Gary A. Ballard, page 5

Cliche Jamboree: American Horror Story TV Review

I have never watched an episode of Glee, I'm proud to say, nor was I a fan of the FX drama Nip/Tuck. The new FX horror drama from the creators of both those shows, American Horror Story, began this week. The show has been heavily promoted on the network and elsewhere, with much of the initial buzz touting a return to the greatness of the horror genre. After watching as much of the pilot as I could stand, which turns out to be about 40 minutes, I can honestly tell you if this is a return to...

Pattern Recognition Review: HD Emptiness

Of all the William Gibson books I've read (which is all but The Difference Engine and Zero History), this is probably my least favorite. The book takes a lot of very interesting ideas, throws them together into a mixer and spits out a blend of hi-def descriptions and low levels of narrative. The story could have easily been a short story or novella, but Gibson's choppy, highly descriptive prose pads the book out far longer than it probably should have been. All but the main character, Cayce P...

Source Code Review: Trailer Injustice

Somewhere along the way, the marketing department for the movie Source Code had to have watched the movie. It's practically a requirement to at least have some passing familiarity with the subject in order to build an audience for that subject. So with that in mind, I cannot for the life of me figure out how the trailer for Source Code was constructed from the movie that I watched on DVD recently.

Had you seen the trailer for the Jack Gyllenhaal/Michelle Monaghan movie Source Code, you would t...

Going the Distance Review: The RomCom Principle

I have a secret to tell. I actually like romantic comedies. Ok, let me rephrase that. I like GOOD romantic comedies, of which there are very very few. Hollywood has a tendency to find a successful formula and then rehash that formula with blatant disregard for anything approaching artistic merit, and the romcom genre is especially susceptible to this tendency. After all, one of the things that makes a romantic comedy so appealing to its target demographic (i.e. women) is the idea that...

The USPS Part Duh: The Netflix Paradigm

I had an add-on thought to my post from the other day about the United States Postal Service. While many of the "free-market solves all" types howl for the Post Office to be shut down in favor of for-profit private enterprise, I would wager many of them don't realize (or don't want to) how instrumental a postal service operated by the state can be for business. As one example of a government operation being instrumental in the creation of new, competitive businesses, I offer you Netflix.

You k...

Mass Effect 2 and the Hiroshima Dilemma

I recently finished playing Mass Effect 2 for the first time. Yes, I realize that I'm about a year late on this particular bandwagon. I tend not to buy games like this at full price and thanks to Steam's incredible periodic sales, I get all the gaming goodness at half the price or less. I enjoyed the first game a great deal and couldn't wait to get into the second, even going so far as to put down Final Fantasy XIII on the 360 to return to the world of Commander Shepherd. As a warning, if...

Book Review: Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

I have to Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead two stars instead of one mainly because I do believe Card has the ability to write. However, after over 100 pages of reading this, I found the same problem with it that I had with Ender's Game, only amplified. I didn't care one whit for any of the characters involved. Not only that, but every sentence of dialogue out of the characters mouths irritated me on a cellular level. Though intrigued by the story, I cannot stomach it through the eyes o...

The USPS: The New Socialist Evil

The last week has seen the shrieking deficit drama queens fixate on an entirely new target: the United States Postal Service. It seems that the Post Office is in a bit of a bind, fiscally speaking. Due to the insanely rising costs of healthcare (and thus, retirement funds since old people get sick a lot more than young people), the USPS is close to missing a payment for its retired workers. Some have even suggested the service is close to complete default, and thus is in danger of being...

Under the Amoral Bridge Featured on the Freelance and Fiction Blog

The Freelance and Fiction Blog has featured myself talking about Under the Amoral Bridge on their Author POV segment today. Go over there to read the full interview. I want to thank Rachel V. for the opportunity to promote myself on her blog.

The Next Bridge Novel

With the release of if [tribe] =, my schedule has now opened back up for some actual writing. Those who follow my Twitter feed will know that over the last two weekends, I've begun work on the follow up novel to my third book. I'd like to tell you a little bit about my future plans in regards to the Bridge Chronicles and other projects I have in mind. 

First, let's talk about that fourth Bridge Chronicles novel. My working (and likely final) title for it is The Shootist. This title will make little sense to you now, but will make sense in the context of the story. It will take place a few months after the end of if [tribe] = and will explore some of the leftover threads from that novel, especially at it relates to the Gangland. I'm excited about this one, as I will finally introduce you to a character that has been hanging around the "Bridge-verse" since I first started writing in the world back in 1994. 

What does that mean for this web site? Well, it's certainly going to be a place to keep tabs on. I will be releasing a new Tales short story later this month - it's tentatively scheduled for release the second week of July. I plan on writing one more Tales short story before beginning work in earnest on The Shootist. Sometime in late August or early September, I plan on collecting all the Tales short stories into one big eBook only compilation called Tales from the Bridge Chronicles, Volume 1. This will include all the stories published on this site under the Tales banner, the two short stories previously available only in the novels Under the Amoral Bridge and The Know Circuit, as well as the last short story I'll be starting this weekend.

In amongst that, I'll be working on learning Drupal in preparation for setting up a separate author site for myself, meant to be more of a bloggy type of destination for updates on all my work as well as non-fiction pieces I've got in mind that have nothing to do with the Bridge. Beyond all that, once The Shootist is done and published, I've got a project in mind that I don't want to talk about yet, but I'm pretty excited about it. 

Thanks for all your support, your kind words and positive feedback. I hope you continue to enjoy my writing for as long as I keep banging it out.